Monday, May 03, 2010

Self-inflicted death penalty suggests the horrors of a life sentence

A death row inmate who sneaked into his estranged girlfriend's Will County farmhouse in 2002 and beat her and three others to death with a crowbar apparently killed himself Thursday because he was scared of being moved into the prison system's general population.

Brian Nelson, 27, who was convicted of murder, home invasion and aggravated arson in 2006, was found dead in his Pontiac Correctional Center cell about 2:30 a.m., according to a Department of Corrections spokeswoman. Other sources said it appeared Nelson had hanged himself.

Nelson was scheduled to appear at the Will County Courthouse on Friday and likely be re-sentenced to life in prison. In December, the Illinois Supreme Court upheld his convictions but threw out his death sentence, finding the trial judge had wrongly removed a juror opposed to the death penalty.

The convicted killer had hoped for a new trial or to remain on death row, his attorney said.

"As nuts as it sounds, he preferred the death sentence over natural life," said Steve Haney, his Joliet attorney. "He had indicated he would rather have stayed on death row, with the definite potential of dying by lethal injection, than to live the rest of his natural life in the midst of the general population in prison."

Comments

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---I can't comprehend being locked up in a little concrete box for the rest of my life!
As someone that's been in the hospital for a few weeks, I go stir crazy there, yet I was able to walk around, watch the TV I wanted to, make all the phone calls I wanted, it was still driving me nuts.
I've never thought suicide was the right thing to do except under extraordinary circumstances, such as dieing from some painful disease, but I guess this also rates there.
Another good reason to get rid of the death penalty.
If you really want to punish them, lock them up forever in solitary.

---I agree with Garry, taking away all of a person's freedoms and facing imprisonment for the rest of your life, is far worse than death, for some. Which is why many often kill themselves right after the crime, rather than face arrest.

On the other hand, while I don't like the fact heinous killers should be supported by taxpayers for the rest of their lives, I sometimes believe giving them the death penalty is letting them off too easy.

The funny thing is, we don't practice death penalty with sufficient frequency to have any hope of knowing if it is more or less of a deterrent than life imprisonment. One guy, likely with his particular set of psychological issues making a statement doesn’t tell us much one way or another. I have also heard conflicting information about what costs us less.

All things being equal, or impossible to tell if they are different, in cases when a certain extra level of evidence is met, the death penalty may still have a reason: for some victims’ families it might provide closure, a sense of justice. As Wendy suggested, for some crimes this desire for justice achieved through death penalty extends to a wider community. It is not unreasonable to suppose that life in prison for some becomes tolerable life – you have to remember you are not dealing with typical mentalities - and can carry with it hope of release in old age, or escape.

Fear of the general population seems to be saying more about prison mismanagement than anything else, as I don’t think we actually mean for prisoners to be terrorized by other prisoners. I am not sure that’s the right kind of justice. Being killed by another inmate seems to be “cheating justice” the same way a suicide does. I think who is in direct charge of administering punishment is not without significance.

ZORN REPLY -- Lots and lots of studies have shown that the death penalty has no consistent deterrent effect on murder, and the reasons are pretty obvious. Many murders are crimes of passion in which people aren't thinking straight; most murderers don't imagine they'll ever be caught; some murders are, in fact, the result of evildoers trying to cover their tracks to diminish the chances of being caught. A few studies have even suggested an "aggravating effect" of capital punishment in that state-sponsored executions create an atmosphere of additional violence (I don't really buy those studies, for what it's worth).

I think the two best things you can say about the death penalty is that it gives some victims' families a sense of closure and relief, and that's a not-inconsiderable thing when you've undergone the horrors most of them have. And that it can be a good bargaining chip to get someone to plead guilty to the charged crime and even admit to other crimes...it can hasten justice (at the same time, obviously, it can be a form of blackmail, especially when used upon an innocent person: "Boris, if you plead guilty to murdering your uncle, we'll give you a life sentence. But if you go to trial and you're convicted, we will execute you"...might cause you to plead guilty and not take the chance with our notoriously dodgy justice system.

I wonder how dodgy it is statistically, as big miscarriages of justice are probably more prominent in memory (and certainly capture journalistic attention :-) ). And I wonder how it compares to others countries.

Purely anecdotally, after being a juror on a murder trial, I was left with a rather positive impression of the process. Though not exactly “12 angry men” (one of my all-time favorite movies, along with “Shawshank Redemption”, where justice is miscarried), I was rather amazed by how different forces, temperaments, experiences, thought processes all balanced out and cut through what the judge afterwards said was rather muddled statues that made distinctions between self-defense (= not guilty) vs. acting in unreasonable fear of ones life (= guilty of second degree murder, instead of first degree).

I didn't say that was the right amount; serious research is needed for that. Nor did I say it would be the only criteria. Obviously screening out of criminals, on-going sponsorship requirements for those who clearly will not be able to support themselves are more than reasonable filters. And since money for additional services can not be deployed in an instant, there have to be waiting times, perhaps even different waiting times depending on where you are heading and the amount of sponsorship.

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